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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) recently estimated that global sea level will rise from 0.18 to 0.59 m by the end of this century. Rising sea level not only inundates low-lying coastal regions but also contributes to the redistribution of sediment along sandy coasts. Over the long term, sea-level rise (SLR) causes barrier islands to migrate landward while conserving mass through offshore and onshore sediment transport. Under these conditions, coastal systems adjust to SLR dynamically while maintaining a characteristic geometry that is unique to a particular coast. Coastal marshes are susceptible to accelerated SLR because their vertical accretion rates are limited and they may drown. As marshes convert to open water, tidal exchange through inlets increases, which leads to sand sequestration in tidal deltas and erosion of adjacent barrier shorelines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accumulation rates of terrestrial sediment have increased in the past few million years both on and adjacent to continents, although not everywhere. Apparently, erosion has increased in elevated terrain regardless of when last tectonically active or what the present-day climate. In many regions, sediment coarsened abruptly in late Pliocene time. Sparser data suggest increased sedimentation rates at ∼ 15 Ma, approximately when oxygen isotopes in benthic foraminifera imply high-latitude cooling. If climate change effected accelerated erosion, understanding how it did so remains the challenge. Some obvious candidates, such as lowered sea level leading to erosion of continental shelves or increased glaciation, account for increased sedimentation in some, but not all, areas. Perhaps stable climates that varied slowly allowed geomorphic processes to maintain a state of equilibrium with little erosion until ∼ 3-4 Ma, when large oscillations in climate with periods of 20,000-40,000 years developed and denied the landscape the chance to reach equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]